MARKETING AUTOMATION: ALL THE MARKETERS ARE DOING IT!

Most marketers and businesses know what they need to do to launch and maintain successful marketing campaigns. They realize the importance of quality content integrated with an active social media presence and a dedicated outreach process. They understand the role of measuring results and using them to iterate and improve their strategies and tactics. And they acknowledge that keeping their eyes on the digital horizon is a necessity.

It’s all well and good to be aware of what’s required to attain a certain goal but it’s a completely different beast to deliver on it. And implementing everything I mentioned – everything you need for a successful digital marketing strategy – is much easier said than done.

The various moving parts of an integrated digital strategy – content, social media, email – are not only complex undertakings, they’re also extremely time consuming. If you’re having trouble visualizing how to possibly manage and track all of this while still keeping your business moving forward, you’re not not alone. It’s a huge issue for businesses of all sizes.

Luckily for you, me and every other marketer, there’s a solution that helps streamline marketing strategies. And like we often do around here, we created a fancy infographic to explain what marketing automation can do for your business.

Developing, building and managing a digital marketing strategy isn’t a job for just one (or even two) marketers. And yet many companies hire a marketer, give them all the work and hope for the best. If this sounds like you (or your small, overwhelmed team) then read on because marketing automation is the answer to your problems.

Ever get tired of sending the same email to more than one person? How about manually reproducing the forms and landing pages on your website? There are some repetitive digital marketing tasks that eat a disproportionate amount of your time; these are the tasks that marketing automation tackles. Just think, if you only had to do these things once, you’d save a ton of time and could focus on more heavily weighted areas of your strategy.

To help you understand how marketing automation works, we’ll show you not only how it saves you time, but how it simplifies and optimizes your whole digital marketing strategy. When you implement marketing automation, you really have to assess what it is you want your customers to do. For example, Half Of a Yellow Sun had one goal: get fans to buy movie tickets. Marketing automation leads your customers down the sales funnel, which begins with them interacting with your content or social media posts and downloading a marketing resource.

One of the strengths of marketing automation is its ability to capture and save the lead information of potential new customers. Once you define and setup your landing pages, you can easily duplicate them across all relevant pages of your site. In order to download a resource from your website, potential customers must fill out a form that gives you their name and email address, which is then automatically stored in your CRM by the automated system you’ve implemented. It’s almost like magic!

In step 3 of the marketing automation process, email takes its turn in the spotlight. After a potential customer downloads a resource, they immediately receive a thank you email along with links to other relevant resources. Each time this customer expresses interest in another resource, you ask them for a little more information about themselves. The goal is to slowly build a profile which then makes it easier for you to determine exactly what problem this particular potential customer is trying to solve. Oh and in case you forgot, all of this is automated. You only have to set it up once, then it runs on its own!

Once a potential customer has crossed a certain threshold (defined by you) that indicates they have genuine interest in your products and services, it’s time for a sales rep to make personal contact with the customer. The marketing automation process is designed to qualify leads for you so you aren’t wasting time making cold calls to customers who have filled out one form.

Think about it: how many times have you filled out a form just to get a “free” resource, most of the time with zero intention of buying a product or service? I know that I’ve done it dozens of times, only to ignore emails and calls from sales reps. The marketing automation process manages this for you without you having to think about it. What kind of business wouldn’t benefit from a streamlined sales funnel with more qualified leads?

It is not a case of either using Marketing Automation or not using it. The differences between a company using the most basic form of marketing automation and one using it at it’s most advanced is likely going to be greater than the difference between one using it basically and one not using it at all.

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WSI Axon is a network of digital strategy and marketing thought leaders with offices in over 80 countries. WSI is uniquely positioned to deliver marketing solutions through leveraging its global expertise, specialist partner network and proven methodologies.